LEAD...FOLLOW...OR GET OUT OF THE WAY (PART 2)

The feedback for our post about crisis followership was much appreciated and we hope this update adds similar value to your preparations.  In that previous post we discussed a view on the nature of leadership, it's connection with followership and the art of being a good follower.  In this post we'll examine crisis through the lens of the leader and explain how this might help your preparations as crisis leaders.

Accepting that 'leadership' (noun) has three dimensions (leader, follower, context) and that these three  must be in harmony for 'leadership' to be present, it's clear that a leader must influence all dimensions, especially in a crisis. Impacting in an unbalanced way or failing to have any impact on these dimensions will restrict the effectiveness of the response to a crisis.

So What?

Accepting all that's been said thus far it's therefore an easy step to appreciate that the crisis leader must (yes, must) deliberately seek to influence all three dimensions for best effect. This is perhaps equally as true for the day to day challenges of leadership as it is for times of crisis.

Context.  Crisis leaders must exercise judgement and skill in influencing the context for a positive effect.  This requires them to understand the situation and its implications for their people, their organisation and the impacts on other interested parties (customers and regulators for example).  Leaders must make decisions based on this clarity of understanding with a view to generating actions and safeguarding against unintended consequences.  And those supporting leaders must identify when and how these actions are having an effect on the context(s) and feed this information back for further decisions.  All of this requires crisis leaders to be clear about the three questions of context: where are we now, where do we want to get to and how are we going to achieve this.

Followers.  This group was the subject of the previous post.  From a leader's perspective, connecting with followers both within and beyond the organisation in a way that resonates is key to altering the context in your favour.  It'll be a challenge for leaders to try and establish this rapport as the waves of crisis break over their heads; lay the groundwork to build these relationships and connections now.  Develop an understanding of followers'  expectations and of 'what makes them tick' and use this thoughtfully during times of crisis.

Leaders.  In the course of our work we often come across those who believe that a totally different model of leadership applies in times of crisis.  Its true that leaders must respond to the context(s) within which they are operating but it doesn't follow that anything goes as far as leaders' behaviour is concerned.  In fact the reverse is true; crisis intensifies the spotlight and pressure on leaders at all levels.  Remaining mindful of your behaviour, coping with pressure and maintaining a clarity of mind and of purpose is more important than ever.  Exercise the arts of leadership to lead by example and trust that your followers are skilled enough to help keep you on track.

By consciously operating within and upon the three dimensions of 'leadership', crisis leaders stand a better chance of success.  Practice makes perfect though; so we would encourage leaders to adopt this guidance in daily life and use the environment of scenario based tests and exercises to practice adapting to the changing context of a crisis.

Managing Information and Actions in a Crisis

In an earlier post we talked about the need to manage the process by which crisis decisions are taken and talked about the OODA Loop (read Decision Making or Analysis Paralysis).  In this post we going to present some concepts around how to speed up the OODA Loop. If you can get your decision making processes to happen faster than the crisis is unfolding then your decisions stand to be more effective. On top of that, making a larger number of quicker decisions, each one correcting the errors of the previous one, is likely to help you reach an optimum solution faster than if you wait for total clarity. So what to do?

CRIP: Establish and maintain a full understanding of the situation. This is sometimes referred to as the Common Recognised Information Picture. It is built up of all available validated information. It is not a chronological list but a contextualised picture that can inform decisions. Date/Time stamp it and keep it up to date, even when the decision makers are not meeting. Use information pull (gathering information in) and information push (people and organisations knowing instinctively to forward information) to achieve this.

Strategic Aims: Make sure the Crisis Management Team establish the Strategic Aims for managing the crisis early on. These may even be drafted in a plan for confirmation or adjustment on the day. They won’t change very often but they set the tone for the response, driving information management and response. If the top aim is ‘safety and staff welfare’ this will determine that things progress differently for any given situation than if it   were ‘corporate client entertainment events’. Sounds obvious and simple but it is often overlooked.

Key Issues: Identify the Key Issues of the moment and when decisions have to be made by. Remember also that people need time to carry out the actions that result from the decisions made. Key Issues are those that arrive from looking at the CRIP through the lens of the Strategic Aims. They require management as they reflect the priorities that have been set. Use talented managers to select Key issues and identify options prior to the CMT meeting up.

Manage Actions: Decisions need actions to make them a reality. Taking a decision is not the same as things happening. Have a process, team and resources to break decisions down into actions, allocate those actions and monitor performance. Update the CMT on progress so that they can adjust decisions accordingly.

Decision Making or Analysis Paralysis?

How's Your Crisis Navigation...?

A crisis brings many pressures to bear.  Leaders at all levels will be faced with choices about the 'least worst' option, with little time, inadequate resources and sparse information upon which to rely; they'll have to navigate the challenges of the crisis.  The path ahead won't be clear.  And quite often crisis leaders run the risk of becoming trapped by their need for certainty and simplicity, while the crisis provides for neither.  In these circumstances it's easy to become stunned into indecision, searching for a complete picture, overwhelmed by the 'noise' and making little progress.  

US Air Force pilot, John Boyd, expressed the logic of his decision making in aerial combat as the 'OODA Loop' - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  Observation is about improving your awareness of the situation, whilst accepting you won't gain a complete picture.  Orientation talks to 'sense making' of what you've observed, relating it to what you already know and to your experience. Options might be generated at this point and tough choices follow.  Decisions are sometimes easier said than done, but decisions there must be if any progress is to be made.  And for all of this to have any effect, the decisions must generate coherent actions that lead to progress.  Don't forget it's a loop, so after the action there'll be more observation to see the effect of the action, and so begins another cycle of the loop... you get the picture.

Simple as this may sound in theory, many crisis teams struggle to provide themselves with quality information, making their decisions more difficult and less likely to have a positive effect. To help your crisis team make optimal decisions it's key that they are neither swamped (leading to paralysis) nor misled (leading to irrelevant decisions).  They should be presented with as clear a picture as possible based on the right information (filtered - not every possible piece of information) and anchored through the key issues in play.  And that's where many teams come unhinged; they have neither a system of  information management, nor the means to bring it to bear.  The more complex your organisation the more of a problem this is likely to create.  It's therefore key to have a system that coordinates the OODA loop effectively to give the decision makers the information they need to make relevant decisions that will have a positive effect.  

Our recent piece of thought leadership draws on some experience in designing and delivering just such a system; in fact a whole crisis management facility and the accompanying procedures were designed and built around this very logic. All that's needed to help your crisis decision making is the means to gather information, filter it, join it together and present it effectively - all enabled by a skilled team and some well thought through and rehearsed procedures.  OODA - not paralysis.